Outcast
by SimpleThingsInAMadWorld
Summary: (Set during series 1, about episode 4 or 5.) Ben was being difficult, as usual, Karen was constantly answering back, as usual, Angela was randomly turning up to their house uninvited, as usual, and Jake was still being bullied. But it was when the bullying took a turn for the worse, did Sue and Pete realised that life was too short to argue with their mental family.
1. Chapter 1

**So, I said that I wouldn't update till after the new year, and if anything, I probably should have updated my other fanfiction as opposed to starting a new one, but I this idea came to me after I rewatched all of Outnumbered in preparation for the Boxing Day special, and I knew I wouldn't be able to do anything else if I didn't write this one.**

 **Happy reading - please could you review and tell me what you think. Thank you :-)**

Opening the front door, Pete trudged into the jungle that was his house - having kids certainly changed the way he lived, a copious number of toys thrown about on the carpet, not that you could tell it was a carpet. Possessing kids wasn't loathsome - it was definitely an incredible experience, but once in awhile, it would be wonderful to walk into a house where he could actually move, or sit down, especially after a rough day at work, such as today, where there were three fights in his lesson with 11B alone, and another two in the other four lessons he taught that day.

As soon as he closed the door, he felt himself being engulfed by his youngest child, Karen. "Daddy, daddy!" she shrieked excitedly, as he picked her up, Karen beginning to rattle on about little girls taking pictures of fairies, answering her strange, peculiar, questions, as he put her down on the stairs, bending down to be eye to eye with her.

Once he had answered her questions, she sprinted off again into the living room, abandoning Pete, his youngest son towering over him at the top of the stairs.

"How was school?" he asked, despite knowing he had probably gone home early - this was his son, after all, a passive equivocator.

"I was sent home." Of course, Pete thought, raising his eyebrow, rolling his eyes.

"So you went to the office and told them you were ill, and they just sent you home like that?" Asked Pete.

"Yes! School have a new lady," Ben cheered, shooting back to his room to continue playing with whatever he had been playing with before Pete had come home - probably some experiment with a bird or squirrel that he had been hiding in his room; it was the most likely reason for the mould smell that Pete had begun to notice that had been radiating from his room.

Walking into the kitchen, Pete saw his wife, a thrall to the stove, cooking what looked like scrambled eggs in a, close to rusty, pan.

"What time did they send Ben home?" Pete asked his wife, Sue, kissing her on the cheek, opening the fridge to find some orange juice, which proved quite a task considering the fridge was a representation of their hovel - a mess, filled with absolute rubbish.

"Ten o'clock - he was at school for an hour! Thanks to her, our goddamn son has driving me absolutely nuts all day - he won't shut up - he gave me a blasted recital of Macbeth, using ketchup for the death scenes. Moreover, bloody Veronica has been emailing and calling me all day, even though I told her had two 'sick' children," Snapped Sue, beginning to violently beat up the eggs that were cooking in the pan. Wondering what she meant by two children, Pete put his hand on her shoulder, calming her down. "Mind you, Jake only made it to lunch time," Sue admitted, just as the doorbell rang. Walking over to the door, Pete left Sue with the scrambled egg, opening the door to an unexpected Angela, who brought an air of hubris where ever she went.

"Oh, how nice for you to come round," Pete lied, Ben arriving at the top of the stairs to announce to Aunty Angela that he was extremely ill with the plague, and was sent home at ten o'clock.

"You look quite healthy in my opinion," commented Angela.

"Well, I am ill - your opinion is rubbish," Ben bellowed, scampering, once again, back to his room,

"So Jake was ill?" Asked Pete, walking back into the kitchen with Angela, Sue sighing obnoxiously as soon as she saw her 'beloved' sister.

"Apparently," she said, flicking on the switch of the kettle, and pulling out four mugs, putting a tea bag in them. "According to the lady at the office, he fainted."

"Is he alright?" Angela asked, beginning to rummage around her handbag. "I have some supplements that would bring his energy right back up, balance the unbalanced vitamin levels in his blood."

"Or I could continue to do what I was doing by giving him some paracetamol and letting him sleep," Sue hissed through gritted teeth, angry at how her sister had the nerve to tell her how to raise her own kids, when she hadn't even had any of her goddamn own; the tofu- obsessed air head, rhapsodising over her 'amazing' supplements and mental gymnastics.

"But is he alright?" asked Pete, placing his hands on his hips, concerned about her eldest son.

"He was pretty sluggish earlier, but he's asleep now so he'll be fine, like elastic - it's probably just some bug going around at school - it is coming up to winter, and you know as well as anyone the amount of people that are sick this time of year." Pouring the boiling water into the four mugs, Sue filled them up to the top with milk, piling spoonfuls of sugar into two of them. Handing Angela one of the unsweetened mugs, she turned to Pete.

"Take this one up to Jake, will you," handing him one of the sweetened mugs, keeping the other one for herself, and to rightly.

"Sugar's completely fallacious for your health," Angela butted in.

"Yes, well nevertheless, I think that both Jake and I need it - you can try dealing with Ben for a whole day before you say anything," Sue shrilled, once again, through gritted teeth.

Abandoning the two sisters to deal with their differences over the way a child should be brought up, Pete took his tea, and Jake's, upstairs and into his eldest son's blacked out room, placing the mug on the nightstand by his sleeping son, surrounded by a copious amount of blankets. Pete considered migrating back to the kitchen, leaving his son to rest but decided otherwise. Although it was almost bug season, it wasn't quite around yet, which made Pete curious.

"Buddy... Jakester," he whispered, shaking his shoulder gently. Squinting his eyes, Jake sat up, slightly out of it.

"What, dad?" Jake asked, his voice rather raspy.

"I brought you tea. Your mum said you fainted at school."

"I don't want to talk about it," Jake groaned, rolling on his side, away from his dad, who proceeded to sit on the corner of the single bed.

"Why not?" Asked Pete.

The bullying was serious; there was no doubt about that. At first, Jake had survived, letting them take his money or run off with his bag, which was annoying, especially as he was unaware of what he had done to deserve it, but the bullying was not unbearable; he could deal with not having lunch for one day or having to fish his school bag out of the waste bins behind the school at the end of the day.

The boys then turned to using words from their limited vocabulary, such as chubby, or shortie, or dumb-arse, and so on, keeping with their original methods also. Once again, it wasn't unbearable, but it did worm its way into Jake's head a little more; maybe he did deserve to go without lunch, or breakfast - he couldn't change his height, but he could change his weight, so there was one less name they could call him; Jake also began to stay up a little later, revising over school work, and looking ahead, in subjects like maths and science.

Only when the bullies turned to violence, sporadically, surreptitiously beating him up behind the bike sheds, that it got horrible inside Jake's head, all the self-loathing. Sustaining hundreds of colossal bruises as a result of his weight meant that, consequently, food became his enemy, only eating small meals at dinner, saying that he had had a hot meal for lunch when his parents questioned him; he would also walk to school, which took half an hour or so, telling his parents that he wanted to breathe in fresh air. Just after half-term, he started pulling all-nighters, spending as much time as he could revising; when teachers asked why he fell asleep in his lessons, he would put it down to the amount of football he played. However, they continued to beat him up, Jake having to wear long sleeves constantly to hide the purple and blue forest of bruises on his arms, legs and torso.

However, instead of confining his father in all of this, he merely told him that it was embarrassing that he had fainted in front of his whole English class; rumours spread fast in his school, and he knew what would be waiting for him when he went back to school - he would be called weak, or pussy, then be beaten up.

"Just drink up your tea," Pete said, leaving his son to surrender to sleep.

"You woke him up? What were you thinking?" Sue shouted vulgarly, ignoring the looks from her idolised sister, as Pete ambled back into the kitchen with his own cup of tea, taking a sip.

"I was checking on him. He's asleep again," Pete assured.

"I God damn hope so - I have to work tomorrow and I can't leave him alone, here."

"You don't work on Thursdays," Pete said.

"I have to tomorrow, considering I took the day off today," Sue sighed, placing the, now, overdone eggs on some toast, calling down Karen and Ben.

"I could look after him," Angela piped.

"You're looking after our dad," Sue pointed out, exasperatedly.

"I'll stay at home tomorrow - call in and say he's ill; they can bring a supply in. I only have two classes tomorrow, anyway," suggested Pete, placing the two plates that Sue had prepared on the table for the kids that had just walked in.

"Now there's an idea," Sue said.

"It will give me time to finish this pile of marking I have upstairs, as well," Pete went on.

"Great. Ben! Stop throwing food at your sister," shouted Sue, noticing the borderline brawl in the corner of her eye.

"Oh, stop being so austere," Angela scoffed, folding her arms as she went to join the two little ones at the table.

"I'm the austere one?" Sue questioned. "I am nothing compared to you! Who was it who questioned the amount of sugar in my tea?"

"I'm merely watching out for your health!" Angela fought back.

"This is an excellent example for the kids," Pete added in, sarcastically. "And if you keep going, you'll wake Jake up."

"Oh, you can not say anything," Sue spat, sharply, stabbing the wooden spoon covered in the dross of the scrambled egg into Pete's chest.

"I thought you said it was wrong to stab people," Ben interrupted.

"It is," Sue admitted, turning to her seven-year-old son.

"Then how come you're allowed to do it?" he asked.

"It's different…" Sue thought for a moment, before lowering the 'weapon'. "Have you finished your dinner?" Ben and Karen both nodded. "Why don't you go and watch some TV?"

"Can we watch Little Britain?" Ben asked.

"No, you can not," Pete replied, which, in turn, made Ben whine. "Just watch Cbeebies or something."

"Cbeebies is for babies!" Karen shouted. "I'm not a baby!"

"I didn't mean it -" Pete was cut off by an offended Karen.

"If anyone's a baby, it's you!"

"But I'm older than you. If I'm a baby, then that makes you a baby too!"

"I'm not a baby!"

"We get the point, Karen! Just go and watch TV," Sue said, walking over and coaxing them before the living room door.

"Fine," Ben scoffed, stomping off into the living room, Karen following much more calmly.

"Why are you here, anyway?" Sue asked Angela, glaring with a jaundiced eye at the pompous woman.

"Oh, finally! We ask why I'm here," Angela snarled, purposely winding up her younger sister.

"Is your son ill? Have you been violated by both your other son and boss all day long, like termites? No, I don't think you have, so don't you dare comment on the fact that I haven't asked you why you have ceremoniously turned up at our house uncalled for!" Sue whisper-shouted, looking as if she were about to hand out an obituary with Angela's name on it. At that moment in time, Jake came downstairs in his pyjamas and dressing gown, his hair looking like a bird's nest.

"What's wrong Jakeyboy," Pete asked.

"I came wash my mug out; I'm thirsty," Jake mumbled, sleepily. "What's going on?" he asked, cluelessly.

"Oh, nothing, Jake. Go upstairs and I'll bring up some water in a minute," Pete said, taking the mug from the boy, who turned around and made his way back up the stairs disorientated.

"Now, where were we? Oh yes, you were about to give us some half-hearted excuse," Sue remarked, pointedly.

"Well, actually, I am here for a reason. My boyfriend broke up with me," Angela hollered, a tear coming from her eye.

"Well, isn't that marvellous," Sue snapped sarcastically - she couldn't be dealing with all of Angela's ridiculous problems right now.

"Sue, maybe you should go upstairs - I can deal with Angela," Pete offered, his foresight telling him that the argument would not end well, for anyone.

"Fine, fine, I'll go," Sue mumbled, wiping down her top and briskly walking out of the kitchen, head held high.

"Sorry that she's being so boorish; I know breakups aren't easy, but this isn't a great time right now," Pete acknowledged, calmly.

"No, I know when I'm not wanted. I'll be off," Angela jeered, placing the plates that had been at the table, and her mug, in the sink, picking up her handbag from the kitchen island and walking into the hallway. "Bye kids," she sang, as if nothing had happened, poking her head into the living room. "Tell Jake I said get well soon," Angela spoke, before leaving.

"God, she's stressful," Pete mumbled to himself, rubbing his hands on his face, going back into the kitchen to get Jake his glass of water.

"Sue…" he called up the stairs, climbing up them to sit in bed with his wife, leaving the two younger kids to their own devices downstairs, which probably wasn't the best idea.


	2. Chapter 2

"Bye you two!" Sue shouted, pushing the two hyper children out of the front door, consequently, thirty minutes late, leaving her other two boys to muse over the day while she worked for a female dog with an attitude problem.

"Bye," Pete shouted back from the kitchen table, surrounded by towering piles of badly structured, unfinished essays about Hitler's rise to power, written by his two tired classed, 10B and 10C class, who he no sympathy for; he knew for a fact that they had all gone to at least two parties involving alcohol and drugs that week alone.

In the living room, Jake lay on the sofa, watching daytime TV, although Pete knew that his son was probably already asleep. Yesterday he hadn't noticed, as his room had been almost pitch black, but Jake had enormous black bags under his eyes from exhaustion; unlike his 10B and 10C classes, he was sympathetic for Jake for the reason that he knew for a fact that Jake hadn't been to three drug parties that week. Moreover, when he thought about it, Jake had had bags under his eyes for weeks, ever since just before the first half term.

Tucking into the marking, Pete watched the time move slowly by, and by the time he had finished marking the sixty questionable essays, it was only twelve o'clock. As it was roughly lunchtime, Pete walked into the living room to his partially asleep son, curled up on the sofa, watching Bargain Hunt.

"You hungry?" Asked Pete, sitting on the edge of the other sofa.

Jake shook his head. "Not that much," he croaked; it was then that Pete also noticed the lack of baby fat on Jake, who looked more boney than Pete remembered.

"Shall I bring you some crackers, so that if you do get hungry you don't need to ask?" Jake nodded. Although, ordinarily, he was terribly quiet, today he was completely subdued, making Pete wonder whether there was something more going on. "Coming right up, Jakester."

Ten minutes later, balancing, badly, a plate of crackers, two mugs of tea and a plate with his ham and cheese sandwich, the pinnacle of his culinary skills, Pete sat down, joining Jake in watching Bargain Hunt. "Here you go," he muttered, passing the tea with roughly the same amount of sugar as Sue had put in the previous night, to Jake, who had pushed himself up.

"So, are you feeling any better than yesterday?" Pete asked, taking a bite of his sandwich.

"Not much better. Tired," he mumbled, halfheartedly, taking a sip of his extremely sweet tea.

"How's school going?" Asked Pete.

"It's school, isn't it," Jake said, shrugging his shoulders.

"What about the bullying?" Pete asked.

"I'm not being bullied. Why is everybody asking?" Moaned Jake, glaring at his dad threateningly, despite being completely out of it.

"When I was younger I was bullied, and so was your mum; we were both outcasts - we're worried," Pete admitted, concerned about his eldest.

"I'm not being bullied, dad," Jake moaned, turning back to the TV, taking a sip of the tea that was slowly giving him energy. Just as Jake had spoken, the phone rang, lifting Pete up and out of his chair. Originally, he looked in the cradle, but he knew that would be a false lead - it was probably nesting in the bottom of the bin or something.

"Why does on one in this house put the phone back in the cradle?" he questioned, searching through the rubbish - he made a mental note to clean the kitchen. Finding the phone in the back of the bread bin - he had been on the right lines - he answered it, not recognising the number. "This is the house that doesn't know how to put the phone back in the cradle," Pete said.

"Is this the residents of Jake Brockman?" a voice asked.

"Who's asking?" Asked Pete, creasing his eyebrows.

"Mrs Thompson - I'm Jake's form tutor," the voice replied.

"I heard about the incident yesterday and just wanted to make sure he was alright."

"He's alright - exhausted, but nothing a few days of sleeping can't fix," assured Pete, wandering over to the living room, leaning on the wall.

"Oh, okay. Nothing too horrific then," she laughed.

"No, nothing too horrific."

"There was something else I wanted to talk to you about, Mr Brockman," Mrs Thompson said.

"What?" Pete asked. By this point Jake was watching his dad, wondering who was calling at this time of day.

"Have you noticed anything different about Jake?" she asked.

"My wife and I have noticed he's been a bit more subdued than normal, but I'm guessing it's down to exhaustion, as proven yesterday," Pete recounted, glancing at Jake every other second, beginning to get nervous as to what she was insinuating. As for Jake, he had gone pale, terrified about what the person on the other end of the phone was about to say, knowing that they were talking about him.

"It has come to my attention, and the head, that there is a possibility that Jake is being bullied," she admitted, wording the sentence cautiously, knowing how parents could react to hearing their child was being bullied.

"Bullied? What kind of bullying?" Asked Pete, watching Jake as his eyes went wide open, both of their stomachs dropping like a tonne of bricks.

"I'm going to get some more tea," Mumbled Jake quickly, feeling stripped of his dignity; standing up, losing his balance and almost toppling over, Jake walked out of the room, only to be stopped in his track by his father, who, grabbed him by the shoulder, raising his eyebrow.

"We don't know, Mr Brockman. If you could talk to Jake, and get him to open up, then we can sort all of this out. I'm sorry about all of this," Mrs Thompson apologised.

"On, don't worry. I will talk to him now. Thank you, Mrs Thompson." The call ended, and Pete put the phone down on the side, rather hypocritically considering he was the one who complained about not being able to find the phone. "I thought you said you weren't being bullied," Pete burst out.

"I'm sorry, please don't be angry. I just thought I could handle it," Jake mumbled, looking distraught, Pete sighing deeply.

Bending down so that he was eye-level with Jake, Pete spoke: "I'm not angry. I just wished you would have told me or your mum earlier, so that we could have sorted it all out, earlier. Look, why don't we go upstairs and talk about this." The two trudged through the mess, up the stairs, and into Pete and Sue's room, lying on the double bed, Jake crawling on next to him. "Who was it?" Pete asked.

"Just some boys in year ten," Jake muttered, fiddling with his sleeves.

"When did it start?" Pete then asked, looking down at his tiny son, who was curled up against him.

"Near the beginning of the year," Jake replied, realising how long it had been going on for - what, three, four, months or so.

"What type of bullying?" Asked Pete, repeating the question that Mrs Thompson had asked.

"I don't want to talk about it," Jake grumbled. "I'm tired."

"I know you are, but the sooner we finish this, the sooner you can go to bed," Pete assured, rubbing Jake's back gently, comfortingly.

"It's nothing. Just names," Jake claimed, obstinate to tell him the truth, still subconsciously playing with his sleeve, catching Pete's eye. Not saying a word, Pete changed position so that he could easily roll up Jake's sleeve, revealing something he definitely wasn't expecting.

"Did they give you these bruises?" Pete inquired, looking at his mottled arms. Jake didn't reply but avoided all possible eye contact with his dad. "What did they do, Jake?" Pete asked again.

"They took my lunch money, or my school bag, to begin with," Jake croaked, cautiously, unwilling to continue. Then they started calling me names, and they beat me up, behind the bike shed, 'cause I'm an idiot and I'm short and fat and ugly," Jake burst out suddenly, after a few minutes of silence.

"Oh, Jake," Pete sighed, pulling him into a dad-sized hug. "You may be short, and there is nothing you can do about that, but you're nothing else."

"Why would they do that, then?" Asked Jake.

"I don't know, Jake," Pete admitted, wishing he could have eased his son of this pain, this burden, much sooner. A thought struck Pete - what if yesterday was to do with it all, so he asked Jake. "Was yesterday to do with any of this?"

"I may have been staying up a bit late to revise," Jake confessed, sheepishly.

"And you haven't been having meals at school like you said you had, or breakfast - all you've been having since half-term was a portion of a meal smaller than Karen's?" Pete quavered, shocked. Jake nodded again. "No wonder you fainted yesterday."

"Can I please go to sleep, dad?" Jake asked.

"Of course," Pete said, getting up and picking up Jake, who was incredibly light, cradling him almost, taking him to his room and letting him sleep - no wonder he was so light, and that would explain the never ending use of long sleeve shirts and the bags under his eyes - why, how, had neither he or Sue noticed that their son had slowly been deteriorating in front of their eyes?

Ben and Karen charged through the front door like a stampede of elephants, followed by their exhausted mum.

"Don't wake up Jake, Ben," Pete shouted, engulfing Sue in a hug.

"How's your day been?" Sue asked her husband. "Ooh, the kitchen looks nice," she commented, walking into the outstandingly tidy kitchen.

"I tell you later, after the kids have gone to bed," Pete said, turning on the kettle.

"What happened? Has Jake been sick? Is there something wrong?" Sue questioned, immediately thinking the worse.

"No, nothing like that. You could say today was actually quite beneficial," Pete assured - finding out about the bullying was quite pleasing as now they could sort it all out, and not let Jake deal with it himself, which clearly was not working.

"Okay... Right, what do we have in the way of dinner?" Sue muttered to herself, looking at the time; four thirty. Opening the fridge, she picked out eggs. "I'm absolutely jaded; we can have scrambled egg again."

"I'll sort out dinner," Pete decided, taking the eggs from her hands and putting them back. Go and sit down," Pete coaxed, pushing her out of the kitchen.

"As long as Angela doesn't come again," Sue said, walking upstairs, investigating what her kids were doing. As usual, Karen was playing with her teddies, re-enacting that week's episode of Britain's Got Talent, but, as for Ben, he was not in his room doing some berzerk experiment. "Ben?" she called, listening to the muffled sounds of giggling coming from Jake's room. "What are you doing Ben?" she questioned, opening the door to find her youngest son giving Jake, who was asleep, mind you, a makeover with a marker pen; the classic moustache and glasses. "That had better not be permanent," Sue snapped, taking the pen from his tight grip.

"Ow," Ben moped, pulling a face.

"Why don't you play with Karen, or watch TV, or play in the garden?" Sue suggested, listing all the safest options.

"But I want to play with Jake!" Ben whinnied.

"But Jake's asleep right now. You can play with him tomorrow, but at the moment, you can't."

"You take the fun out of everything!" Ben shouted, storming out of the room."

"Don't shout at your mother," Pete shouted from the kitchen. "It's not nice, it is?"

"But you're shouting at me!" Ben shouted back.

"We're in different rooms, though!"

"Life's so unfair!" Ben shouted, slamming the door to his room, only to come out again two minutes later wearing a pirate costume, running downstairs and into the kitchen shouting mutiny.

"You are not holding a mutiny Ben - go and get changed," Pete said, seizing the sword Ben was welding out of his hand, in the interest of everyone's safety.

Once the kids were all in bed, Sue and Pete sat down in the living room, the Tv playing quietly in the background.

"So, how was your day?" Sue asked.

"I found out what was wrong with Jake," Pete said, taking a sip of his tea.

"And…" Sue trailed off.

"I was right. He's been being bullied since the beginning of the year," Pete revealed.

"What do you mean?" Sue asked, unwilling to believe her husband.

"I got a call from his tutor at lunch - she was just checking up on him, but then told me that she thought he was being bullied."

"And did you confirm this with Jake?"

"He has all these bruises on his arms. He hasn't been eating or sleeping - that's why he fainted yesterday," Pete explained.

"Oh." Sue had been left speechless.

"The good thing is that we can now sort all of this out," Pete said.

"I need something stronger," Sue said, putting down her glass of wine, standing up. "Do we have any gin or something?"

"I don't think we do," Pete said, creasing his eyebrows.

"What a shame," Sue said, sitting back down. "Are you sure he's being bullied?" Questioned Sue, trying to dismiss the idea that his poor baby boy was really being bullied - he was supposed to be going to the best school in the area!

"Come with me," Pete said, standing up and taking Sue's hand. The pair walked up the stairs to Jake's room. Opening the door, Pete knelt down next to Jake's, seemingly expansive, bed, and rolled up his sleeve, the dim light coming from the hallway illuminating the copious number of bruises on Jake's arm. "I can assure you, he's being bullied," Pete said, looking at his wife, who's mouth was wide open, like a fish, ruminating the information in her head. "We need to be a lot more vigilant," Pete continued.

"It's preposterous!" Sue whisper-shouted. "I have a good mind to call up that school right now and stick their 'outstanding' Ofsted report right up their first-class, oversized posterior."

"What are you doing in my room?" Jake muttered, his eyes half open, his face still covered in the marker from Ben's 'game', making Pete chuckle.

"Your mum was worrying," Pete said.

"About what?" Jake asked, a realisation appearing in his head just as he said it. "You told her?" he snapped.

"We need to get this sorted," Pete said to his son.

"By telling everyone? The more people that know, the more I'm going to get beaten up tomorrow!" Jake shouted, sitting up, pulling his sleeves back down, as if by doing so made him less vulnerable to the world.

"Ah." Once again, Sue was stumped by one of her children.

"I promise you that won't happen," Pete said, although he knew there was no way of knowing what would happen when Jake went back to school.


	3. Chapter 3

"What was that you said last night?" Sue questioned threateningly at her husband, the two stood in the middle of the bright white hospital corridor outside Jake's room in the paediatric department. "That he wouldn't get fucking beaten up?" Pete had been called at three thirty by the school explaining that Jake had been taken to hospital after a fight broke out in front of the school gates involving knives, apologizing profusely, assuring Pete that the two boys that had brought the weapons had been dealt with, Pete immediately calling Sue, who then had to, undesirably, call Angela to pick up the kids from their after-school clubs, so that the parents could race to the hospital, only to be told to wait - they had been waiting an hour by this point!

"I didn't know how bad it was," Pete said.

"Despite being called by the school, seeing all the bruises, and him fainting only two days ago?"

"Mummy! Daddy!" a voice cried, disrupting their argument. Karen and Ben ran up to them, followed by Angela, despite Sue's protests. "Is Jakey going to be okay?" She asked, jumping into her dad's arms.

"Jake is going to be fine," Pete said.

"You know, apart from the stab wound, the three broken ribs and the broken wrist," Sue whispered loudly, however, only so that Pete could hear - she didn't want to scare the other two; they already had overactive imaginations.

"How was I to know they had knives?" Pete questioned.

Once again, their borderline argument was interrupted by a nurse who had come from Jake's room. "You can see him now," she said. "Oh, hello Ben! How are you?"

"I'm good Mrs Smith," Ben said.

"For the first time ever, it's not you in that bed," the nurse laughed.

"Yup," Ben said, popping the 'p'.

"Angela, you take the kids in. I need to talk to Peter," Sue said, opening the door for the three, who walked in. "I'm sorry, Pete, for snapping. I'm just worried."

"He's okay, and the boys in year 10 have been expelled, and probably sent to my school, so they can't do anything else to him," Pete said, pulling his wife into a hug. "Come on, let's see the mess that's our son," Pete said, opening the door.

"How are you feeling Jake?" Sue said, walking into the room, her son lying on the, yet more white, bed, hundreds of wires hooked up to monitors.

"Like I've been stabbed with a knife," Jake said sarcastically.

"Well, it's nice that you have your energy back," Pete said.

"He doesn't have as much energy as me!" Ben shouted, jumping onto Jake's bed with much vigour, the grunt coming from Jake suggesting that Ben had broken a fourth rib.

"What did you feed him?" Sue asked Angela.

"She gave me chocolate!" Ben shouted, standing up to start jumping on the bed.

"Get down Ben!" Sue said, picking him up off the bed, placing him in the plastic chair. "Why did you give him chocolate?"

"He said he was hungry but that's all we had in the car," Angela admitted.

Before Sue could get riled up, Pete told her to leave it. "I think after the incident," Pete said, looking at Jake who was watching something that Ben and Karen were showing him, "that we should respect the fact that we are all family, and that we are tied together forever no matter whether we like it or not."

"What are you trying to insinuate?" Sue asked.

"We shouldn't be arguing, because no matter how much we like or dislike our family members, we don't know what's around the corner, and how much time we have left," Pete said, finishing his small speech.

"I guess you have a point," Angela said, Sue nodding her head in agreement.

"Ewww! What's that smell?" Jake asked. "Is there cheese or something in here?"

"Don't be rude," Pete said, glaring at him. Hopefully, things would go back to normal.


End file.
